Holding Your Breath
by Limonata
Summary: Post-S5, Alex POV. Meredith & Alex friendship. / They're scratchy and rough and have PROPERTY OF SEATTLE GRACE HOSPITAL embroidered on them, but they smell like Izzie. / COMPLETE.


_I caved and posted this because I wanted to have it up before S6 started. So now it is! It's not really the kind of thing I want to say 'enjoy' about (hint: for weeks it went by the moniker of my "Dead!Izzie fic"), but... enjoy. Might get added to eventually, but complete for now. Adding me to author alerts would be the best way to find out, probably._

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Title:

Holding Your Breath  
**Rating:** M  
**Pairing:** Mer/Der, Alex/Izzie  
**Summary: **Post-S5, Alex POV. Meredith/Alex friendship. // They're scratchy and rough and have PROPERTY OF SEATTLE GRACE HOSPITAL embroidered on them, but they smell like Izzie.

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You get it, now. You get why Derek looked the way he did when Meredith was dead. You thought you got it then, but. No. _Now_ you get it. In this new part of your life, without Izzie, you… envy him? No, surely not, nobody could envy anguish that overtook the need for privacy.

But you do. Because, you—you don't _do _that. You grew up where boys were rough-and-tumble; play fighting before they could talk. Men were closed and unemotional, all problems solved with a beer or two, but there weren't even that many men around. Your own father was just a name to you now, and the men still with their families were mostly still there because leaving would require sobriety and plans. Maybe you know, _knew_, that it didn't have to be that way, but it's ingrained in you, a part of you. You were provided with this example before birth, and it's created a you with coping mechanisms of alcohol and quips. But that's how it is for your family. _Men don't show emotion_.And you just can't, you can't sit on the floor in the hallway and cry and weep and miss her where people can see. It just didn't work like that, not where you came from.

You'd wanted to stay with her, in her room, even after she… left it. It was the last place she'd been alive; the last place you had seen her smile, the sparkle in her eyes. The last place you'd touched her, her skin warm and soft and smooth under your hands. It was where Shepherd had told you that her tumor was gone and you'd let yourself relax, finally _relax_. She was breathing and talking and smiling and she _knew_; she knew who you were. She knew that you were married to her and that you had Popsicle babies somewhere, waiting.

It was the last time you had been happy.

But you couldn't, because that was stupid and sappy and part of you said you weren't supposed to care about stuff like that. You weren't supposed to care, but… you couldn't bring yourself to stay there. Because even though you were falling apart, Meredith had been there for you like you had held Izzie herself when Denny died. Meredith, tears streaking down her cheeks, throat raw. Meredith, the glue. Meredith, on her own wedding day. She had nearly put her arms around you, and then in your ear, the whispered words _it's not Izzie now_ and the horrible flashback kept flipping and changing and all you could see was Izzie in your arms, pink taffeta rustling, but you rather than her feeling the heartbreaking agony that was all that moored you to this world. Then it changed, to Shepherd and Meredith, blue and icy, clutched.

Death had permeated your existence, no longer just the hospital around you. It was up-close and personal, grasping at your own lives. Was this how it would go? Izzie had lost her fiancé, you had lost her. She had tried to move on, but goddamn Denny couldn't let go. (You know it's not Denny. You _know _that. But it's a metaphor you identify with, and so it stays.) Anybody you tried to move on with… would it happen to you? Izzie lost Denny. You lost Izzie. Would it happen again? Was it just going to repeat, repeat, never ceasing? Love, loss, lost, gone? Death, for ever? Meredith and Derek had escaped, maybe. Meredith lived. Meredith lived for them both. Meredith, with warm arms around you, ready to pick up the pieces. That was who she was.

You thought you could fight for both of you. You thought you were strong enough.

You weren't.

But you took the sheets.

They're hospital grade, meaning they're scratchy and rough and have PROPERTY OF SEATTLE GRACE HOSPITAL on them, but they smell like Izzie, and even though that's morbid and disgusting because you know it's probably dead skin cells and your own imagination at this point, you don't care. You figure, darkly, that it's not much to be left with of her last days, some bedding and a few head scarves and wedding crap she treasured. But being in Meredith's house kind of creeps you out; Izzie told you she kept seeing Denny and since it's Ellis's house… factor in Meredith's near death whatevers…—it kind of seems like that house is some kind of screwy portal for the underworld.

So you spend a lot of time in galleries, sitting, far back where nobody can see you but where you can see down. You would stare down at the nameless, faceless people getting their appendix fixed, or their pancreas, or their liver. And you would tell yourself _that's Iz. She's right there. She's getting fixed and then, right then, as soon as she can, she'll come back to you. Just wait. She's right there. _It didn't work, not always. But sometimes, when you were tired enough, it was easier for your exhausted, weary mind to go _oh, okay_, and so you spent far more time than you should have up there. Your drug was exhaustion. It shrouded reality in your mind and when you were so tired you were able to believe yourself. Plus, you could sleep then. After you were as tired as that, you could go to sleep and not think about her. Sometimes, though, when you were in your room—it had never really been yours and Izzie's, you think bitterly; you never even had a proper wedding night—you would cry. But never at work. Never in the gallery.

Meredith sat with you, often. More than anyone else. She did it without seeming to be patronizing you, like she wasn't _sitting with the widower, I know, yeah, his wife died, brain tumor, thought she was screwing her dead fiancé, what a joke, terrible isn't it?_ She was pretty much the one person you didn't have to act for. She wasn't wanting to comfort the man who married his girlfriend because she was going to die. That was what most people did, anyway. But not Meredith. She let you switch off; you didn't have to concentrate, choose what to say, think about the effect it would have on whoever you said it to. You didn't have to calculate the reactions that would follow as your words rippled through the hallways on the breaths of nurses and orderlies and other gossip-sucking 'medical professionals'. It was okay with Meredith. She was there, and you said things, and she listened. Sometimes you wanted her to say things, about her or Shepherd or patients or just goddamned _anybody_, and she would. And she'd pick up on your mood and steer the conversation, when there was any, in a way that didn't feel like she was tiptoeing around you.

She gets you. She hasn't once drowned you in sweet, memorial speeches about Izzie, or you, or Izzie and you.

"I…" she says now. The first time, and you know it's going to be something about the Someone you don't talk about. You know it will be about Her when she can only get the frigging words together in her head.

She's not good at this either.

You cut her off. "Yeah." It would be curt to someone else, but she knows that as difficult as it is for her to locate the words, it's just as hard for you to find a place to put them. The sentiment crosses between you, though. You know what she means.

"Alex," she murmurs. And then, somehow—you don't know exactly, but you're not really paying attention—she launches herself across the two chairs between you. Her small arms wrap around you from sideways and a little behind, and. Warm.

She's warm and soft, smells like honey and lavender and soap. The first person, you realize, that you've touched since Izzie di—since Izzie. It's the first person you've touched. People have touched you, sure, a pat on the shoulder or a handshake or a tap on the arm. But that doesn't count because it's going through the motions and this isn't.

You feel someone let out a shuddery gasp and realize it's you, your emotions wrangling out of you to meet her ears. Her head rests on your shoulder her hair tickles your neck.

You'd forgotten what a hug feels like.

"I," you say, "I…" and she doesn't cut you off. A little _mhmm _is her gentle encouragement, and you inhale, a desperate, needy breath. Your next words escape on a sob full of anguish, creaky and raw and scared of sunlight. "I can still taste the fucking chicken."


End file.
